1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an attachment arrangement extending a pair of elastic bands or tethers each stretched from a respective thigh of a bicyclist to a pair of laterally spaced points on the bicycle for providing resistance to the forward movement of the bicyclist's legs.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In my prior U.S. Pat. No. 5,197,931, issued Mar. 30, 1993, I have described an exercise apparatus in which a rolling frame is trailed behind a user to fix the ends of a set of elastomeric bands, or straps, that at their other ends each respectively attach to the arms and legs of the user to elastically restrain the forward motion of each of these limbs while running. Thereafter I described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,652,427, issued to me on Nov. 25, 2003, an improved form of the foregoing elastomeric restraint arrangement in which the elastic band is branched to the legs from a single elastic strap extending rearward to an attachment at the end of a treadmill, with the single elastic strap delayed in its motion by the lagging motion of a fabric panel to align the strap out of the way of the user's other leg, an improvement that was then carried over for use on a track by way of a roller supported trailing frame described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,998,030 that was issued to me on Aug. 16, 2011.
Each of the foregoing stem from my observation, and also the observations of many others, that any neuromuscular movement sequence of a human body follows very predictable, coordinated patterns dictated by the anatomical disposition of the muscle groups involved in the movement, their skeletal attachments, their various elastic coefficients, mass distribution, moments of inertia, and so on, as it is these interrelationships that were earlier honed by evolution to make us the highly efficient, bipedal species that we are. Of course, improvement by training of such coordinated muscle groups is best achieved by their natural repetition while their main muscle group effort is enhanced. In this manner the muscle group involved in the running movement, for example, is best trained while running with the main thigh muscles loaded by an elastic restraint to a higher effort to extend the distance of the runner's gait, as in my prior U.S. Pat. No. 7,998,030, with the remainder of the muscle complement then following suit.
In the past such elastic restraints were typically deployed between one and another part of the user's body, as for example, the resistance arrangement disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,280,365 to Weber et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 7,314,437 to Frappier; U.S. Pat. No. 7,850,583 to Smith; and many others, or the restraint is fixed to a stationary object, as in U.S. Pat. No. 6,612,845 to Macri et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 7,087,001 to Thli; and others. While suitable for the purposes intended, each of the foregoing limits the extent of its use by its very nature and their application is wholly inapposite to train the wholly unconstrained movement of running, or particularly bicycling, movement that is characterized by well coordinated muscle groupings that achieve a self-reinforcing gait or cyclic pattern from their common coefficients of restitution resulting from coordinated and matching mass-elastic coefficients and dynamic responses of the whole muscle group.
An elastic restraint arrangement useful in developing and strengthening the coordinated movements that complement the operation of a matched carriage like a bicycle are therefore extensively desired and it is one such arrangement that is disclosed herein.